Guaranteed Direct Sold campaigns ensure that a sponsor receives placement in a publisher's ad unit. They represent one of two main types of Direct Sold campaigns you can run (the other is a Non-Guaranteed Direct Sold campaign). In this article, we will walk you through how to set up a Guaranteed Direct Sold campaign.
Creating a Campaign
1. Click the ‘Create Campaign’ Button from the desired Advertiser page
2. Select the ‘Direct Sold’ Option
3. Select the "Guaranteed" option.
4. Fill out the required campaign fields.
Campaign Name: Enter the name of your campaign.
Conversion Tracker: Add any conversion trackers you've generated if you would like to track conversions.
Frequency Cap: Determines the number of times an ad will be shown to a given person during an hour, day, week, or month.
Campaign Label: This is a non-searchable field that you can use to label details about your campaign.
Start Date: Set the start date of your campaign. Any strategies under your campaign will have to start on or after this date.
End Date: Set the end date of your campaign. Any strategies under your campaign will have to end on or before this date.
Budget: Select Impressions, Adjusted Impressions*, or Currency (Ad Spend) and enter your desired value. This will serve as a ceiling to your campaign's spend so make sure it meets or exceeds your desired # of impressions.
Select “Unlimited Budget” if you do not want to set a maximum spend. This setting will remove the spending ceiling and pacing checks. Please note that guaranteed campaigns with an unlimited budget are eligible to take all the impressions available for their duration.
*Once a guaranteed direct-sold campaign with an Unlimited Budget is saved, it will not be able to be edited. A new campaign will need to be created. Learn more about Unlimited Budget here.
CPM: Enter a CPM goal here. This CPM goal merely acts as a reference and won't have any impact on serving impressions.
*Click here for more information on Adjusted Impressions and MPP.
Creating a Line Item (Basics)
5. Click Create Line Item (or 'Save and Exit', if you don't want to create a Line Item at this time) and fill out the required fields. There are four sections: Basic Details, Schedule and Budget, Targeting, and Linked Creatives.
Parent Campaign: If you "create a line item" from the campaign setup page, this section will automatically populate with the campaign you just created.
Line Item Name: Choose a name for your line item
Status: Choose from three options: active, inactive, or paused. If set to active, your campaign will spend once saved. If set to inactive or paused, your campaign will not start spending after the line item is saved. The difference between "inactive" and "paused" is only relevant once a campaign has begun to serve. Once it has, setting your campaign to "inactive" will ensure that no residual impressions (impressions from users who open a newsletter from a forward) are served. These residual impressions can occur if your campaign is set to "paused."
Active - This Line Item will run during the specified flight dates, and data will be available in the Reporting section of Campaign Manager.
Paused - This Line Item will no longer run during the specified flight dates. Reporting data will be pulled into the Reporting section.
Inactive - This Line Item will no longer run during the specified flight dates. Reporting data will not be pulled into the Reporting section.
Line Item Label: This is a non-searchable field that you can use to label details about your line item.
Priority Level: Here you can set the line item’s priority within a campaign. Priority levels range from 1 to 5 with line item’s assigned priority 1 serving first. All line items are assigned priority level 3 by default. Learn more about Priority levels here.
If there are multiple campaigns containing prioritized line items, the auction hierarchy will go as follows:
- All priority 1 campaigns serve before priority 2-5.
- Then all priority 2 campaigns serve before priority 3-5.
- Then all priority 3 campaigns serve before priority 4-5.
- Then all priority 4 campaigns serve before priority 5.
- Then priority 5 campaigns serve.
- Share of Voice will only take over after line item priorities have been filled.
- If there are no guaranteed campaigns, then the auction takes place [depending on your newsletter settings].
Start Date: Choose the start date for your line item. The line item will start at 12 AM unless otherwise specified.
End Date: Choose the end date for your line item. The line item will end at 11:59 PM unless otherwise specified.
Budget: Enter the maximum number of impressions you would like to serve.
*Please note: If Unlimited Budget is checked for this campaign budget will be locked.
Daily Cap: Set a daily budget limit for your line item.
*Please note: If an Unlimited Budget is set, Daily Cap will not be available.
Pacing: You have two pacing options -- even or ASAP. Even pacing will spend the budget evenly over the duration of a campaign, while ASAP pacing will to try to spend the impression budget a quickly as possible. For guaranteed campaigns, we recommend using ASAP pacing.
*Please note: If an Unlimited Budget is set, pacing will lock as ASAP.
Creating a Line Item (Targeting)
Custom Audience: Target or Exclude your audience segments.
LiveRamp: Target or Exclude your LiveRamp 1st-party segments.
Location: Select US-only, or Global targeting. You can select Targeting by country, metro, state or city OR by postal code (you cannot select by both). Then search locations to target or exclude. Note: The targeting option defaults to US-only. If you'd like to select Global targeting, you'll need to move the radio button to the Global targeting option.
Age: Target or Exclude Age groups.
- Pro Tip: If you wish to target a specific age, we'd suggest excluding all unwanted ages by utilizing the "Exclude" feature; this will allow for greater scale.
Gender: Target or Exclude by Gender
- Pro Tip: If you wish to target a specific gender, we'd suggest excluding all unwanted genders by utilizing the "Exclude" feature; this will allow for greater scale.
Device: Target or Exclude by Device
Advanced Targeting: You can target or exclude by the following:
Browser
Bundle
Category
Day & Time
Device Maker
ISP
OS
Placement ID
List ID
Key Value Pairs
Linking ad slot & creative to line items
You now have the option to add either creatives or ad slots to your Direct-Sold campaign. You must add both in order for the line item to run, but you have the flexibility to add whichever your prefer first.
Please Note:
- The creative(s) must match one of the ad sizes supported by the ad slot in order for the line item to run.
- To check which ad sizes the ad slot supports, refer to the "Linked Ad Slots" section in the line item page and look at the "Display Size" column.
6. Link Ad Slots
Now it is time to link ad slots to your campaign. To do so, you can click the "Link Ad Slots" portion of the progress meter, or you can select the "Linked Ad Slots" tab on the righthand side of the screen.
7. Linking Creatives
Before you add any creatives to your campaign, you may want to check out our Ad Specs and Creative Requirements or learn how to create an ad in our platform. If your creative already exists in the platform, you will be able to link it to the strategy from the "Use Existing Ads" section of the Ad Builder.
- IMPORTANT: If you will running a campaign using native creative please refer to this article.
Upload Images: You can upload any images and gifs from your computer as long as the file size is less than 250kb.
Add Third Party Tags: Use creatives hosted by yourself or another service outside of LiveIntent. There are three required fields if you are to upload creatives using the "Add Third Party Tags" option: ad name, source URL, and click URL.
Use Existing Ads: Add a creative from your existing ad library in the platform.
Bulk Tag Uploader: You can download an excel template (in the upper right corner when the "Bulk Tag Uploader" option is selected) and upload multiple third party tags at once.
8. Click ‘Review’ - Review your Campaign and Line Item setup. To confirm creation, click ‘Save’